What Does Tristan Look Like?

It’s always dangerous, as a writer, to say too much about what you think your characters look like.  As, if you’re doing your job right, your readers have definite ideas of their own on that score.  They’re right, of course; you’ve gifted that character to them and they’ve made him (or her) their own.  A professor of my husband’s used to quote the old saw, “trust the tale, not the teller,” and he had a point.  Fantasies are private property; books are not.

That being said, as a writer, you write with a certain vision in mind.  You have to; visualizing something is necessary to describing it.  The fixtures of Isla’s and Tristan’s landscape are, to some extent, all based on real places.  I’ve shared some of those pictures on my Facebook page, for those who are interested.  My “location inspiration” albums are all precisely that: the places that have inspired me.  And some of them are a rather odd hodgepodge.  Those of you who’ve read The White Queen might recognize both Hunyad Castle and the Crane Estate, two wildly disparate places that somehow got joined together.  But I remember the first time I toured the Crane Estate, and found myself in the old rose garden…which was really a druid circle…

So what do I, personally, picture Tristan as looking like?

Behold:

Jonathan Rhys Meyers, if you’re out there, please take note: you’re my choice to play Tristan, in the film version of this series that will undoubtedly never happen.  Because we can’t all grow up to be George R. R. Martin and see our fantasy realms come to live on HBO.  Nevertheless, a girl can dream.  Also, everyone else reading this should feel free to cosplay my characters at next year’s Comic-Con.

If you, dear reader, picture Tristan as looking entirely different and think I’m off my gourd, then good!  I put him out there into the world; he’s yours, now.  Picture him however you’d like!  Write some fan fiction, and tell me all about it!  My characters have, as crazy as this undoubtedly sounds, become real people to me and I’m always interested in hearing about them.